of the weights and strengths of the materials and parts utilized in its construction played a paramount role in its design, as did testing in the wind tunnel to minimize drag and maximize lift. Planes contemporary with the Olmsted-Buffalo-Pitts craft were fabricated from wooden ribs and often bamboo framing covered with lacquered fabric of essentially ultralight design. Even the Curtiss flying boats still had rubberized fabric wings to lift their thin wooden boat hulls. Since the pilot of the Olmsted plane would be surrounded by crushable laminated wood structures, these structures would absorb much of the blow in case of a crash. By the additional incorporation of “inherent stability” in flight as well as “around the stall” and “special landing gear” for nose-first landing, Olmsted wished to make “aeroplaning as safe and feasible as automobiling”. The prototype plane which Charles Olmsted designed in 1910 for the Buffalo-Pitts-Olmsted Syndicate has raked-back infinitely-variable-camber high-aspect-ratio wings, identical in shape to those of the 1935 DC-3. It also has retractable nose-first landing gear, an elevated high-aspect-ratio T-shaped tail section, and a gyroscopically-stable air-cooled Gnome engine rotating in the direction of travel. The two counter-rotating maximally-efficient pusher propellers were mounted closely together at the apex of the wings and the covered surfaces of the wheel mount to counter swirl. There are special struts above and behind them to further render the remaining swirl directly into lift and thrust. Propeller swirl was hindered on the up-stroke but free on the down stroke to increase lift at take-off. A major pioneering innovation on the plane is that every item was carefully stress-analyzed to a standard strength redundancy and minimum weight. All wooden parts were of hollow skin-stressed construction. Blueprints and patterns were made for every part, so that the Buffalo Pitts Company could go into immediate assembly-line production of the successful prototype sometime late in 1912. Many of the features of the Buffalo-Pitts-Olmsted plane are incorporated in the carbon-fiber 2008 Pipistrel Virus, winner of the 2007 and 2008 NASA award. The Virus also utilizes a streamlined fuselage suspended beneath the wing and an elevated T-shaped tail section. The Virus’s propeller is also of Olmsted-patent type. The overall similarity of the two craft, separated by nearly 100 years in time, is quite striking (pls. 18-19). Today the plane is visible for all to see in the Smithsonian’s Udvar Hazy center, but not a trace survives of the Buffalo